Investigates Blog

Travis County DA: “The CPRIT investigation is ongoing and aggressive”

AUSTIN – The Travis County district attorney said Wednesday afternoon that her office’s investigation into Texas’ cancer-fighting agency is “very serious and we are far from finished in our efforts.”

“The CPRIT investigation is ongoing and aggressive,” said Rosemary Lehmberg.

Lehmberg’s six-line statement came a day after Jimmy Mansour, chairman of the Oversight Committee of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, released his own through Bill Miller, a powerful Austin lobbyist and political consultant.

Miller’s statement said Mansour met with the district attorney’s office last week and was assured that he and all other current board members “are free from suspicion in the ongoing CPRIT investigation.”

“Mr. Mansour is pleased that the cloud has lifted,” Miller said in his statement.

Reached for comment, Gregg Cox, director of the district attorney’s Public Integrity Unit, replied in an email that Mr. Mansour is cooperating in the investigation.

He said the Jan. 18 interview of Mansour focused on two topics – the divestment of stock that Mansour owned when he was appointed by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst to serve on CPRIT’s Oversight Committee, and the committee’s awarding of a grant to Peloton Therapeutics.

“His statement is accurate with respect to those areas,” Cox wrote.

The Dallas Morning News reported in November that companies run by Dallas businessman David Shanahan got $12.8 million in CPRIT grants after Shanahan and his associates gave $90,000 to the campaigns of Gov.Rick Perry and Dewhurst.

One of those companies was Gradalis Inc., a biotechnology firm based in Carrollton, and one of those associates was Mansour, who had contributed $40,500 to Dewhurst in the eight years leading to his appointment to CPRIT.

Mansour, through spokesman Miller, told the newspaper that he invested in Gradalis in 2006 and became a board member. Mansour said he was advised that as a member of the Oversight Committee, he could hold investments in companies that received awards, and in which his ownership was no more than 5 percent of the firm. He said that was the case with the stock he owned in Gradalis, which he decided to sell.

Mansour said the sale of the Gradalis stock that he owned personally and through a limited partnership ended in what he called a “substantial loss” in 2009.

The following year, the Oversight Committee members, including Mansour, ratified a $748,905 award to Gradalis, as part of a much larger grant.

Also last November, CPRIT confirmed that an $11 million award to Peloton Therapeutics, a company on the campus of the UT Southwestern Medical Center, did not receive required commercial or scientific review.

Shortly after that news broke, theTravis County district attorney’s office said it had opened a criminal investigation into how CPRIT awards grants.

In her statement Wednesday, Lehmberg wrote: “Let me emphasize the investigation is very serious and we are far from finished in our efforts.”